


Checking It Twice.  3/3

by punky_96



Category: The Devil Wears Prada (2006)
Genre: AU use of Bishop's Wife, AU use of Elf on a Shelf, AU use of Prep and Landing, F/F, Gen, holiday fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-29
Updated: 2017-12-29
Packaged: 2019-02-23 12:17:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13189926
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/punky_96/pseuds/punky_96
Summary: Re-Post from LJ.  Holiday fic that was originally in three parts and will now just be one 'chapter'.Can I claim Elf on a Shelf as a fandom???  There's a fair bit of Prep & Landing and even a hint of The Bishop's Wife :)Prompt: Xenavirgin: Andy discovers Miranda is on Santa's naughty list and sets out to get Miranda to change so she can be on the Nice list.Summary: I didn’t exactly follow the prompt, since Andrea is sent to help the twins and therefore Miranda.Author’s Notes: I nod to the fic, “I Saw Andy Kissing Santa Claus(and now his days are numbered)” for a great title. I haven’t read it in a while, but it’s an awesome thought regardless. A note about timeline: You all know by now that I put time in a blender when I feel like it. Although I think I did okay this time since Elf on a Shelf was published in 2005. Lastly about believing: for the purposes of this fic, the twins still believe in Santa, because he’s flipping real, of course.





	Checking It Twice.  3/3

**Author's Note:**

  * For [xenavirgin](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=xenavirgin), [XVnot15](https://archiveofourown.org/users/XVnot15/gifts).



  
  
_**Checking It Twice** _

 

_A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous. –Coco Chanel_

  
Everyone knows about Santa Claus: he’s got a beard that’s long and white, he comes around on a special night, wears boots and a suit of red, wears a long cap on his head, has a big red cherry nose, and eight little reindeer pull his sleigh… You should hear what they say over in the Naughty Department. Special night—just that one alone has them going for hours. I have to leave when they start talking about absent fathers coming around. I can’t say I understood what they were saying, but they said something that got them all laughing and drinking about Santa’s White Beard. It gave me the shivers and I was thankful that I didn’t understand. I don’t mind visiting the Naughty Side from time to time, but I don’t want to stay there. Heaven’s no. Maybe that’s where that song about seeing Momma Kissing Santa Claus came from? They slap their knees and say that his days are numbered. How dare they!  
  
For as much as everyone thinks they know about Santa, and all the songs they sing about him—they don’t know anything. Just the tip of the iceberg is the saying, right?  
  
In the last hundred years many facts have come about: he doesn’t do it all alone, he is magical, he has a wife… Yeah, yeah, yeah. People think they know all the reindeer names: Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Comet, Vixen, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, Rudolf. The really fancy folks know the lesser deer as well like Olive, Fireball, and Clarice. Some of the truth about the Elves has even come about in recent years. There is a team that goes in to prepare the houses for Santa’s landing and another team that goes out to measure the naughty kids. Wayne sure has made a name for himself after all these years. Only recently have humans actually started to think about how Santa’s List is really created. Really, humans are baffled by taxes and have declared them a season—how did they honestly think Santa compiled a list for the whole world. Yes, with the International Date Line and everything there’s a three-day window, but really most humans can’t even organize their expenses into business, personal, and under the table. How could they possibly think that Santa checks his list twice?  
  
What people don’t know is that before St. Nick retreated up to the North Pole to actually get some work done, he made a few deals. Deals that are not written anywhere, but would never be called into question despite humanity’s ethical decay over the last several hundred years. The thing is, between elves and humans, there are a few other categories, some of them have become famous on their own like the fairies and pixies, but my kind—has kept to the shadows. In fact that’s what the elves call us, which is ridiculous because we hide in plain sight. It happens rarely, but we can be identified as other because of our positivity, a slight point at the apex of our ears, and our ability to process information and organize it into lists like magic. Humans are usually too caught in their own drudgery to notice. They also live on assumptions, like ‘that person is nasty behind my back,’ or ‘she probably goes home and bitches to her boyfriend,’ or any of a million other things that humans think. Humans interact with each other in such choppy ways that often our constant bright attitude is never noticed. Even when it is, we have adapted over time in order to deliberately fumble with our expressions and knowledge so that we appear as any other human being. The ears, well those would not have to be readily visible to anyone, but they could be explained well-enough through a doctor pulling an infant by them or any other kind of crazy nonsense that people believe.  
  
Using humanity’s capitalism for our own ends has been remarkable. By the 20th Century, Santas regularly made appearances in Macy’s department stores. In 1939, we were able to manipulate the good old boys at Montgomery Ward’s to come up with that business about Rudolph. It was a hit. Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you what the stroke of genius was: Elf on the Shelf. We used to have to go around gathering data, living human lives out in the open and communicating back to the North Pole. Now with Elf on a Shelf, it’s like the Baby Monitors of the Naughty and Nice List. My job has become so much easier, which after 367 years is really nice. I can actually go ice-skating in Rockefeller Center (although the bigger rink is in Central Park). I have the time now. In fact, I just coordinate with a few of the local Shelf Elves and make the occasional trip back to the North Pole. My parents retired there last year. Most people think tropical or at least sunny for their retirement. Leave it to my parents to head north like geese or something.  
  
What?  
  
What’s with the attitude?  
  
I’m getting to that.  
  
*** *** ***  
  
These red headed twins picked up one of our Shelf Elves in 2005. She wasn’t awakened until the week before Christmas, even though our records indicated that she clearly was purchased by Thanksgiving. There were blizzard conditions and a crew had to go to the house on a RUSH, because we couldn’t have the girls given presents that they didn’t truly deserve. Had those girls had one more tick on the naughty checklist, they would have been Coal for sure that year. However, while the team was performing its assessment, extenuating circumstances were discovered as the male and female of the household erupted in a low sonic frequency, high density heart ache verbal altercation that escalated to broken glass and tears. I never did find out from ‘Cocoa’ (the girls’ elf) who shed the tears. If legend had it correctly, then they might very well have been from the Coal Elves themselves that had been sent in.  
  
‘Cocoa’ begged and pleaded to not be sent back after the holiday. She didn’t trust hibernating in that house, knowing that she might be forgotten or worse. Her plea almost fell on deaf ears, until she was correcting her name with the registrars. Apparently her name was not actually ‘Cocoa’ after the hot chocolate drink that was beloved by old and young humans a like. It was as common a name as Tinsel, Jingle, or Misteltoe. When she was registered, the elf simply wrote down what she heard and then moved on. The high volume closer and closer to the holidays is absolute madness, especially with families that forget their elf’s name and have to file for re-naming. In a high pitched voice that made the reindeer tremble in their stalls, she fairly screeched at the registrar. “MY NAME IS COCO. C. O. C. O. AS IN CHANEL. YOU KNOW, NUMBER 5? COCO CHANEL.”  
  
If my source in the Naughty Department had it right, she turned her nose up at the poor little registration elf and paraded around on some seriously high-heeled stockings complete with a diamond where the bell should be. “THEY MODIFIED ME!” She turned leveling a gaze at everyone. To emphasize her point she looked down her nose at the registrar and said, “A girl should be two things: classy and fabulous.” Her blue eyes narrowed into slits as she then whispered, “Will you help me now?”  
  
It was the creepy-est thing on this side of Nice to happen in quite some time. Folks couldn’t stop talking about it and watching the clip that had been leaked to “Pull Your Sleigh”.  
  
Coco, with no ‘A’, was evaluated by Psych as soon as the holiday cheer had leveled off for the off-season. She had not suffered a psychotic break and she did not have multiple personalities. Who-the-frostbite she had been imitating was anyone’s guess, but it had been scary. Once I was assigned the case, Coco was able to hibernate in peace, knowing that the situation would be thoroughly analyzed and taken care of.  
  
***  
  
Nate had been assigned to New York the year before and I had been jealous. I had to stop hanging out on the Naughty side for a while until those feelings passed and I could truly be happy for him. That was when I was given my first assignment in 247 years. I had been promoted early and it suited me. I could juggle a large network of elves all across the Tri-State area, and I loved it. I was known. My schedule was flexible. I had never been assigned New York City specifically and that had always been like an un-ticked box on my list. I didn’t like it. Then again I should have been a little more Zen about it, if I had only known that wishing for things was such a dangerous thing to do.  
  
My happy dance when I was given an assignment in Manhattan rivaled the Northern Lights.  
  
Realizing the grunt work I would have to do and the life I would need to lead in order to complete my assignment… Well, let’s just say it was like when one bulb goes out and the whole string of lights won’t work. Lily and Doug had to retrieve me from the floor over at the Naughty Bar. They were very cross with me. They were even more cross when they were assigned to help Nate and I set up surveillance and lives in NYC.  
  
***  
  
Attitude? Let’s just say not all of my people stay in the shadows, and my description earlier about indefatigable positivism, well, it wasn’t quite accurate. Sometimes when we are hiding out in plain sight, we forget that we are hiding at all and just start living a life. Positivism—well, it’s all about the bottom line, right? Overall, I’m still overwhelmingly positive and ‘glass is half full’ and all that, but sometimes a spade is a spade, and sarcasm has been around so long because it is just absolutely amazing. Besides, I’m a New Yorker, I’m supposed to have attitude to blend in.

 

PART 2

 

Having been set up by Lily and Doug for my Elias-Clarke interview wearing that hideous skirt and those loafers (not to mention that lumpy sweater) was nothing compared to the positively arctic ice-dump that washed over me when the twins tricked me up the stairs and into the middle of Miranda and Steven’s fight.  However, my supposed friends set me up to be ornery. Few things had been difficult to accomplish in my life, and I didn’t know how deeply jealous my friends always had been until much later. They had to answer to the Big Man for their behavior. Those two blue-eyed, red haired girls who walked the line precariously close to Naughty hadn’t sent me into the lion’s den to be spiteful or ornery or even because they were devil spawn as my Runway co-workers called them. No, instead when I looked into their eyes I saw a cry for help. I didn’t realize it at the time, and it didn’t make dealing with their mother any easier the next day when I had to get the Harry Potter manuscript, but it was there all the same.  
  
About a month later, they were waiting for me on the stairs. Tears shone in their blue eyes and my oh-so-nice heart came right out on my sleeve to dab at their cheeks. The fact that they let me was a testament to how awful they felt that night. Steven was leaving so at least one part of the equation was simplified for me.  However, this apparently set their mother off in ways that I would see at work and they would tell me about at home. I wondered how one job could simultaneously get easier and more complicated in the same sentence.  
  
I smiled at them and told them, “I’ll help get your mother off the Naughty List.”  We shared a moment of hugs and smiles and togetherness, until I realized I had just about revealed everything. Then I reached into my back invisible pouch and dazzled them with a pinch of Christmas Magic—Powder Form. I tucked them in that night and made sure that not a creature was stirring when I left.  
  
In small ways I made slight manipulations to everyday scenes around the person of the twins’ mother, Miranda Priestly. As her lowly assistant, I made all manner of mistakes and absorbed much of her tongue-lashings. I always hazed the situation around Miranda so that reporting the incidents of Naughty Behaviors could be minimized. When I could I made the coffee hotter, the skirts shorter, and the models flawless. Being sent to run errands enabled me to correct mistakes mid-flight instead of after Emily had already delivered the pathetic excuses for following directions on her desk. Interception was so much easier to manage than quarantine-ing a Force-Ten Miranda-plosion. It wasn’t that she was loud or violent or anything of the kind. In fact she was eerily polite, even if her razor sharp honesty was a little too much hot chocolate for people to handle.  
  
The thing is. I could handle it. As the days turned into weeks and then into months, I was able to outlive Lily and Doug’s fashion advice and become something of an ugly-duckling-cum-swan at Runway. Perhaps I needed to crash and burn so that I could rise from it? I’ll never know what would have happened if I had gone into my mission properly attired. It would have been a shame to finish my work before I had really gotten to know the Priestly women.  
  
Oh, shut up!  
  
*** *** ***  
  
Not long after Thanksgiving I was able to work Elf on the Shelf into one of my conversations with the twins. They had just received the dates that Santa would be at Macy’s. Their special before the store opens appointment was scheduled and they positively squealed. We talked about all things Christmas including their lists and how the year had been so much better without Steven around and with me seeming to smooth the way for their mother to be around more. I worried about that part of our conversation, but realized that they must be referring to their mother’s work. They were delighted to find Coco and show her to me the next day.  
  
I was so glad to have someone to talk to that I checked on her each night after the Book was dropped off, the twins were tucked in their beds, and only Miranda was prowling around the house. I felt taller than I already am when Coco told me in the kitchen that things seemed to be much better overall. The spring in my step that night was certainly not due to these ridiculous and beautiful Jimmy Choos.  
  
As the days drew closer to Christmas, Coco and I were proud to report that the stockings were hung with care. The Assessment Team came out to check on the Priestly women.  With a thumbs-up they said we had done good with the kids. I knew that was enough for now, but recognized that without the support of their mother, the twins would likely relapse if not worsen over the years. It was almost Jingle Time. I had to ask the Assessment Team to make an evening observation in order to classify their mother. I still had until Santa’s team did the second check, but knowing if I had been able to get Miranda off the Naughty List (like I had told the twins I would) had become irrationally important to me. Stepping into the upstairs rec room after delivering the book, Coco greeted me with the bad news. While Miranda’s girls had made leaps and bounds in the Nice department, their mother was still just on the wrong side of the line.  
  
My resolve only strengthened in the face of Nate, Lily, and Doug’s surprise and mocking.  
  
They could return to the North Pole for all I cared. Their jobs done; they could celebrate with Eggnog and all the other sparkles they could muster. I hadn’t gotten through 341 years of out-in-the-open-undercover-work for nothing. I had a collection of awards and jingle bells that they couldn’t even wrap their tree skirts around.

 

 

 

PART 3

 

 

The night of ‘Checking It Twice’ almost went figgy pudding, since the weather was so poor. Planes were grounded at JFK, LaGuardia and Teterborough. Even with warming powder, my stockings were chilled. Roy could only drive so far uptown before he refused to risk either of our lives or the car. I wished with everything I had that I could catch a lift with Thrasher, or even if I had a push sled to smooth the way.  However, I knew the hazards of undercover work so I simply pushed on with one foot in front of the other. The Book was wrapped in plastic as was the small amount of dry cleaning. I was the only thing dripping, when I stepped into the foyer at the townhouse.  
  
I shook off the best I could on the doormat, but I knew I was making a slippery mess as I hung the dry cleaning up and unwrapped the Book to set it on the table. I was just reaching behind myself for some dust in order to leave things tidy when I heard the quiet sounds of Miranda approaching. I turned to look at her just as her toe hit a small puddle of water causing her to swerve off balance on her six-inch heels. Reaching out to steady her with both hands, I felt my heart leap out of my chest as warmth of a decidedly not-holiday kind rushed through me. Our breathing mingled as we looked into each other’s eyes in one of those moments that people write stories about. I couldn’t help rubbing my thumbs across her skin as I stared into her blue eyes. Righting herself in a moment, Miranda let her right hand slip from mine and I thought the magic between us would fade. Instead, she smiled at me in a way that lit up her eyes and folded many beautiful crinkles in her skin. She reached up with tentative fingers and smoothed some of my hair back behind my ever so slightly pointed ear. I blushed from toes to temples. Not breaking our eye contact thing, Miranda chuckled just briefly.  
  
Following as her eyes glanced up, my lips parted in surprise. From the light in the foyer hung a sprig of mistletoe. Cupping my cheek delicately with her fingertips Miranda leaned forward and delicately placed her lips on the corner of my mouth. It was a kiss, if I wanted it to be.  
  
Pulling apart in surprise, we shared a smile and a blush. We each bit our bottom lip with our top teeth and it was a close thing to me actually scuffing my toe on the hardwood floors like a 150 year old of all things.  
  
Letting her left hand fall in such a way that our fingers intertwined, Miranda pulled me along as she went for the staircase. “Andrea,” she admonished me. “You simply cannot go out in this weather. When Roy called me to say you were coming on foot, I was so worried.”  
  
I followed her up the stairs and down the hall. Catching sight of Coco in what appeared to be a recreation room, I made note that I would be talking to her soon. Wordlessly Miranda pulled me into the master bath turning on the water in the shower and pulling out fresh towels from a cupboard. “After everything you have done for my family, for me, this year, Andrea. How could you think I would want you to risk yourself walking here to deliver the Book?”  
  
It was said as a question, but I just stared at her with a big dopey smile that for once she didn’t seem to mind.  
  
I was ordered to shower, given fresh, warm clothes, and invited down to the kitchen for a cup of the best hot chocolate I have ever had outside of the Arctic Circle. As the weather conditions worsened, Miranda insisted that I stay the night, no, the weekend. I could join them for Christmas. The twins would be delighted.  
  
When no creature was stirring, I slipped from the guest room and over to the rec room where I found Coco delightedly thumbing through channels and reclining on the couch. “I don’t know what you did.” She greeted me with the hugest smile that a Shelf Elf could have. “But the Assessment Team was unanimous that Miranda is on the Nice List this year.” Coco waggled her eyebrows suggestively at me like I had seen some of them do over in Naughty and I blushed again hard.  
  
“Did you rig that mistletoe up?” I hissed at her.  
  
Holding her little elf self up, Coco laughed and laughed and laughed. Then she inhaled and was suddenly the picture of seriousness. “Miranda hung that up for you.”  
  
I swallowed hard and tucked my hair behind my ever so slightly pointed ears. They felt warm to the touch and I am sure that they were nearly crimson. “F-f-f-or me?” I stuttered out, once again feeling like a 150 year old kid.  
  
Nodding solemnly, Coco indicated that yes indeed pigs were flying, Miranda had come that final step into Nice on her own, and that she hung the mistletoe up in order to kiss me—at least sorta kiss me. Then breaking back into that huge grin Coco added, “Aren’t you glad that Shelf Elves are forbidden into the adult bedrooms? Otherwise next year I’m sure that you’d both be on the Naughty List!”  
  
Just as I was about to pick up that naughty little Shelf Elf, I heard Miranda’s voice, “Andrea?” We both froze. At least Coco could play inanimate dolly. I had to think of something quick. Snapping my fingers I turned the tv to one of my favorite movies, “The Bishop’s Wife.”  As I heard Miranda’s footsteps approaching, I set Coco on top of the couch and settled down as if I had been watching. “Andrea?” Miranda’s silhouette appeared in the doorway of the room and my heartbeat tripled. Stepping into the room, Miranda turned to look at the screen and then her eyes searched my face curiously. She stepped across the room sitting down on the couch so close to me. “This is one of my favorites.” She murmured as she took my hand and let our fingers twine together.  
  
Letting the end of the film go, Miranda turned and with her uncanny accuracy, she whispered at the sensitive edge of my ear. “I always wondered what would have happened, if Dudley had stayed.”  
  
*** *** ***  
  
I can’t say it was that simple, but that night became a weekend, which turned into a New Year, and in the end I have no idea how many years we have ahead of us, only that we have a good many behind us. It was a scandal with Page 6 here in New York as well as “Pull Your Sleigh” having a field day. Naughty and Nice were both in an uproar for quite some time until the Big Guy made a ruling that was more of a reminder of what we always knew—we all get on the Naughty List from time to time as we should. That effectively hushed the naysayers. Nate, Lily and Doug were assigned to Boston, Amarillo, and San Diego, which quite effectively split them up. Miranda’s grumblings about how old she was were squashed once I was able to prove to her that I had a good 300 years on her. Her time with my parents at the North Pole filled her with enough magic to keep her on the Nice list even without my help for years.  
  
The twins. It all started with them. To mark the year anniversary of our newly remodeled family, we adopted another Shelf Elf. His name was Prada. I couldn’t do anything about his name, but Coco was so delighted with him that his name didn’t matter.

 

  
  
**The End.**


End file.
